Only 44% of full-time students at the Royal Academy of Music came from state schools.
Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Efforts to widen student participation at UK universities have stalled, with the proportion of state school students stagnating and slow progress on recruiting from areas of high disadvantage, official figures reveal.

Despite government pressure on universities to boost participation of young people from poorer neighbourhoods where traditionally few pupils have gone on to higher education, data shows just marginal improvements with figures remaining stubbornly low.

There is wide variation between universities. While some universities recruited all their first year undergraduates from state schools, at a small number of institutions almost half of those beginning their studies were privately educated.

In nine out of the elite Russell Group of 24 universities, the proportion of state school pupils fell over the past year.

Among the universities with the lowest state school participation were Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Imperial College and St Andrews. Oxford and Cambridge had some of the lowest participation rates by state school students – 57.7% and 62.6% respectively – but their figures were an improvement on previous years; Oxford went up from 55.7% in 2015-16 and Cambridge from 61.9%.

Small specialist institutions fared even worse – just over 44% of full-time students at the Royal Academy of Music came from state schools; the figure was 52.5% at the Royal Agricultural University and 55% at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Among the universities to see a drop was Edinburgh where there was a 3.3 percentage point decrease, the London School of Economics (-3.2 percentage points) and Imperial (-2 percentage points).

The Hesa analysis also looked at the proportion of students from disadvantaged areas where there has traditionally been low participation rates at university. It found a 0.1 percentage point rise – up from 11.3% in 2015-16. In 2009-10, the figure was 9.6%.

The education secretary, Damian Hinds, welcomed the figures, but critics said progress was too slow and efforts to widen participation amounted to little more than “tinkering around the edges”.

Peter Horrocks, the vice-chancellor of the Open University, pointed out that the overall number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds had in fact fallen by 17% since 2011-12 if the drop in part-time students was taken into account.

“Part-time and mature students are more likely to be from disadvantaged backgrounds and often studying part-time is their only option, so the sharp drop in part-time students in England is actually undermining the UK government’s efforts to open up higher education,” Horrocks said.

Jon Rainford, an academic researcher at Staffordshire University on widening participation, said universities were working hard to widen access, but more radical change was needed.

“If the government is serious about more rapid progress, more structural solutions are needed, incentivising universities to work collectively with individuals to find the right course and the right institutions for them,” he said.

Prof Les Ebdon, the director of the Office for Fair Access to Higher Education, said the rate of change was too incremental. “We need a step-change in progress to ensure that everyone with the talent to benefit from higher education has the opportunity to do so, whatever their background.

“At the moment, talent is being wasted on an industrial scale – with people that could excel in higher education still being held back by where they come from.”

Hinds agreed more needed to be done, saying: “Many universities are already doing brilliant work to ensure more young people go on to higher education, and I would encourage this best practice to be shared across the sector. Of course there is still more to do.”